


Clever boy

by Xachyn



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Praise Kink, and then "accidentally" stumbling into max's room in the middle of the night, inspired by the party banter of felix asking about max's old science books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 16:51:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21431545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xachyn/pseuds/Xachyn
Summary: It suddenly occurred to Felix how tiny the table was with the two of them huddled around it - their knees touch and the skin underneath his clothes was hot and electric all at once despite the multiple layers of fabric separating them, and Felix was feeling that oddness in his stomach again.
Relationships: Maximillian DeSoto/Felix Millstone
Comments: 22
Kudos: 150





	Clever boy

It’s never quiet onboard The Unreliable. 

There’s always some noise, somewhere, whether it’s the low whirring hum of the ship (that reminds him so much of The Groundbreaker, of sneaking into vents and unused storerooms for a minute of silence); the mindless chatter of some serial or other over the radio; Nyoka stomping around the mass hall looking for alcohol or food to go with her alcohol; of SAM puttering around cleaning the corridor for the fifteenth time today. 

It’s always noisy, no matter the time of day, and as he laid alone in his bunk staring at the metal ceiling that rusted at the edges, Felix was grateful for it, because he thinks his mind is slowly driving him insane. 

It’s something like 17 hours or so since he last spoke to Max, 17 hours since Max offered him access into his old science books. And it’s killing him slowly but surely because he wants so badly to go right over right now and ask to look at those books that Max promised. But it must be the influence of the Captain, always so deliberative and careful with every action that he took, always talking about careful posturing and consequences, that instead of just bustling through with his typical vigour, Felix was lying here on his bed instead, playing the waiting game to not seem too eager and show all his “cards.”

(Cards? What cards? He had asked the Captain when they were last at Stellar Bay, and the Captain had simply smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder with the promise he’ll get it someday.

“Patience is a conquering virtue,” the Captain explained, and if there’s anything Felix knows it’s that he wants to conquer things. With relation to Max. How and what, he’s not sure.)

And so there he was, lying awake, ruminating in his thoughts and waiting for time to pass, tossing and turning in his bed as restlessness clawed at him. He’s a doer, damn it! Not a lie-in-bed-and-think-your-brains-out-er, like the one that he is now. And he’s not sure how long he’s supposed to wait anyway. There’s a small digital clock across the bed from him, its neon green glow mocking him with each blink. 

It’s something like 17 hours and 32 minutes since Max offered his books, which is almost 18 hours, which is tons of time, as far as Felix was concerned, because it’s enough time to take a shit, sleep a bit, eat two meals, listen to an hour of radio serial and run four errands (or six, if he ran really fast) on the Groundbreaker.

It’s long enough, he decided, and he’s due for some conquering, so he swung his feet over his bed and strutted out of his cabin. 

The ship was mostly empty - the Captain had taken Nyoka and Ellie out for some task or other in Fallbrook, and Parvati was probably almost certainly fussing over SAM in the engine room (her obsession with that robot guy is something he’ll never understand) - which meant the halls and kitchen were bare and still. 

He offered a knock on the Vicar’s door once and didn’t wait for a response (he’s waited long enough, surely!) before he slid the door open to march in. 

“Max,” he started, but his words die on his tongue when Max looked up at him with the weirdest mix of sincerity and kindness that momentarily, Felix forgot what he’s there for because his brain had short-circuited and turned into mush.

“Mr Millstone,” Max greeted, and it’s a soft gentle tone that does hot weird things to Felix’s stomach. Max is sitting behind his table, an old fashioned book bound by paper and thread in his hands, his attention pulled away to observe Felix with a look that’s matched only by the tone he spoke in. Felix felt his face starting to warm (why!?) with the way Max is looking at him, so he scrabbled hurriedly for the best sentence he can think of.

“Books,” is the first word that came out from his mouth, “science,” and he thinks he’s done a good enough job of conveying his thoughts.

And Max laughed - honest to god laughed - and it’s the warmest, most comfortable thing that Felix has heard in a long while, and he wanted to take it for himself and wrap it around like a cosy blanket nest and never leave it. Felix can’t put his finger to exactly what it was, but ever since that drug-filled trip in that hermit’s home, Max had become so different.

“Ever so succinct,” Max noted, “but I did agree. Come, pull up a chair.” 

Felix did so, numbly and with an inexplicable nervous twinge in his body as Max ruffled through a trunk near the bed to pull out an old datapad from within it and setting it on the table. It suddenly occurred to Felix how tiny the table was with the two of them huddled around it - their knees touch and the skin underneath his clothes was hot and electric all at once despite the multiple layers of fabric separating them, and Felix was feeling that oddness in his stomach again.

If Max noticed, his expression doesn’t show. 

“Science,” Max began with a fondness in his eyes as he looked at the screen, “is formed on the basis of a five-step methodology. Observation, hypothesis, experimentation, conclusion, and peer review. A great scientist once said that science does not care about your personal beliefs. ‘_If your experiments disagree with your idea, then it is wrong._’” 

Felix nodded with eagerness. “So when do the test-tubes come in?” 

“That would likely be experimentation, though not always required. Science is not just about pouring liquids from one vessel to another - it’s the foundation and the sum of everything around us. How the stars and planets align; how this ship sails from point to point; how our feet are planted to the ground when we walk; how we feel and remember each brush against our skin.” 

The mention of skin falling from Max’s lips set something in him aflame, and it’s too much and too little all at once, so he opted for his second favourite tactic of dealing with Difficult Things, that is to say, ignoring it, and latches on to the idea of the ship.

“You mentioned the ship,” Felix said, “Does that mean Parvati is also a scientist? Does she also do science things?”

Max smiled in a way of pride and affection like he had said something clever, and Felix suddenly realises he loves it, wants it, needs it like he needs breathing. “Parvati is an engineer, and engineering is frequently considered an ‘_applied science_’. I would imagine the process is similar when figuring out an issue on the ship - observation, hypothesis, experimentation and conclusion. Though, peer review must be hard to come by.”

Felix had more questions, and Max seemed delighted with each one, and it’s different in a non-weird way, but they stay like that for hours, a peaceful back and forth that remained unbroken until the Captain and his crew come marching down the hall as Nyoka complained loudly about hunger.

\---

And maybe, _maybe_, that’s when all the problems started. 

Max is always pleased to receive him when he goes knocking, and so Felix is always happy to go knocking, to sit there on that tiny wooden stool and do nothing but listen to Max enthral him with lessons about celestial bodies and the stars and how moons affected the sea despite the insane distance, what a sea even was, and the way every living thing on a planet exists in symbiotic harmony on a delicate and careful construct called an ecosystem.

At some point, he’s not sure when, Max had taken to greeting him with his name, each syllabus enunciated with such gentleness Felix almost mistakes it for affection (though he doesn’t pretend it doesn’t cross his mind in wet lusty dreams or in strangled cries when he touches himself at night).

(Worst still, is when Max smiled and said _clever boy_ when Felix gets a question right, and it just about takes every ounce of self-control he has to not want to run to back to his cabin and rub one out right there and then).

And maybe, probably, he did go knocking so often, too often, that others on the ship have noticed and unrestrainedly start teasing him about it, as Nyoka was doing right now, over the too many bottles of Zero-Gee Brew and Spectrum Vodka that lay empty around their feet in the quiet kitchen hall.

“-tish true,” Nyoka slurred, waving a bottle haphazardly around, “Ellie said so. She said, “science lessons”, with the wriggly fingers, and we all know what that means.” She wriggled her own in imitation of quotation marks.

“Is not,” he answered, with all the sternness and assertion his drunken brain could muster.

“Does he… enlighten you, show you what his penance is?” Nyoka grinned, and Felix groaned, possibly too loudly.

“There’s no enlive-, enrigh- no lightening!” Felix exclaimed, fighting the fog of tipsiness that threatened to overwhelm him and the scarlet blush that’s rushing up his face and down his stomach, because _god_, does he want to know. Does he secretly, shamefully want to know what Max looked like underneath all his layers of clothes so bad, how it would feel to have Max’s rough hands all over his body, purring Felix’s name and calling him a clever boy.

“Does he stick it where it’s _hooooooly_,” Nyoka guffawed to herself, clearly pleased, and Felix downed the rest of his glass for lack of words to say. “Because you’re the _hooooly_ mission he needs to do?”

Nyoka descended into maniacal giggles, and when Felix drained the last of his bottle, he decided that maybe enough is enough, because Nyoka is now slumped over on the table in light snores from drinking ten times what Felix drank in half the time, so he let the muscle memory of his legs drag him back into his quarters.

It’s late, he thought, because the lights in the hallway are dim, but he’s walked to his room enough times that he barely needs to open his eyes to do so (and the world is swaying and twirling when his eyes are open anyway, so who needs that), and he’s pulling at his clothes and shrugging them off as the door slid open with its characteristic _schlink,_ tossing them on the ground without care until he’s wearing nothing but his boxer shorts.

It’s weird, how the world is so different, how the smells are so different, and maybe it’s the weird thing that Nyoka added to his Zero-Gee but his room smells less of Purpleberry Punch and more old paper and musk, but he brushes it off with little thought, because drunk and tipsy Felix doesn’t want to think, drunk and tipsy Felix wants to crash into his soft, soft sheets and wrap himself in warm, musky hotness. He’s delighted to flop belly first into his bed, groaning as he eased himself into the surrounding softness and heat, burrowing himself into it as much as he physically could to become one with the warmth. It’s different and possibly confusing, but whatever Nyoka spiked his drink with is crazy good, because all he smells is all the things he wants and loves, of musty paper and a light, salty, masculine musk. He’s slipping somewhere between dream and consciousness when he finds something his limbs can latch on to, so cling he does, wrapping his arms and legs around to hold on tightly and rubbing his cheek against it, because that made the most sense (and what is he, if not a paragon of good sense?).

It’s amazing, how everything seemed so amplified, and he’s never dreamt like this, so conscious of an eventual, gentle tangling of callused fingers in his hair, brushing and stroking him with a tenderness he didn’t know he craved. It felt so good he groaned, good in a way that’s different but also similar to the pooling heat in his hard dick because of all the weird stupid things Nyoka said. He’ll forgive her for that though, if she promised to give him more of this crazy good drug, because he can’t imagine not knowing this euphoric bliss again, and it’s in the embrace of this warm, familiar paradise that he’s lulled into gentle sleep.

\---

He woke up to the Captain calling out loudly for him, and briefly, he thought that maybe he shouldn’t have been doing all of that drinking. There’s a pounding in his head and a churning in his stomach, and he groaned, this time more so in pain than satisfaction.

“Good, you’re finally up.” The voice is stern, cold, annoyed, and his eyes snapped open because they sound so much like Max –

And the room he is in is decidedly not his, from the little table that he poured over to study with Max, the small pile of paper books lining the wall, and he’s suddenly conscious of the hot body behind him boring a fierce, disapproving glare into the back of his head. He pushed himself off the bed, horrified that’s it’s not the bright red sheets he uses, but before he could even offer an apology or an explanation, the vertigo from movement caught up with him and he threw up.

Right on to the floor of what is clearly Max’s cabin.

Felix let out a strangled sob.

\---

He wheedled some caffenoids out of Ellie with shame, mostly because Ellie is giving him that all-knowing smug-ass smirk while Max directed SAM for a thorough cleaning of his room.

“There you are,” the Captain said, marching up to him and Max, “Let’s go, we have things to do in Stellar Bay and I want to get started early.”

The Captain dragged him down the hallway while the rest of Felix’s clothes are still a heaping balled-up pile in his arms, and the smirk on Ellie’s face never did leave, even after they round the corner and down the steps. Max was decidedly avoiding eye contact with him, and he looked worn and exhausted with dark circles under his eyes as if he went without sleep all night, and every glance that Felix takes of the vicar doubled the guilt that’s bubbling inside him.

It’s painful, even with the distraction of busy work that the Captain shepherded them around to do in the city, the way Max refused to even look at him. They’ve had something before, something tentative and fragile, and Felix knew he’d gone and fucked it all up, crashed through the foundation of their relationship like an over-drugged mutant tossball player.

The awkwardness stretched out for hours as the Captain shuttled about, until eventually Max sighed, speaking first while the Captain was busy with someone else.

“So,” he said, in air of unconvincing casualness, “is there anything you’d like to talk about, Felix?”

“Is this about last night when I ended up in the wrong bunk?” Felix shuffled, feeling the hard dirty mud beneath his boots as he clambered about for a distraction, “Cause I swear I wasn’t drunk. The hallway’s disorienting.”

“That’s not what I-“ Max let out a long sigh, “I just wanted you to know that I’m here in case there’s anything I can help you with.”

_Like fuck me really hard and really raw, because that will definitely help_, Felix wanted to say, but he’s had enough experience with deflecting, “Also, I am really sorry about your floor.” That much is true. Nobody wants a puddle of vomit in their room.

Max sighed again, “Forget I broached the topic. Let’s just pretend last night didn’t happen.”

And Felix is happy to agree, except that is the one thing that has the Captain whipping his head back to stare at them in horror. Velma is left ignored, glowering by the side.

“What,” the Captain ground out, eyes wide. “No way.”

Felix barely managed a word before the Captain had both his hands on their shoulders, still staring at them with uncontrolled surprise.

“Look,” the Captain said carefully, “This sounds important. So, er, please talk about it. On the ship. And maybe ask Ellie and Parvati over while you’re there. And, er, pleaseremembertouseprotection.” The last line is more of a warbling as the red-faced Captain turned away to continue his conversation with Velma.

Max heaved a sigh.

“Come on then,” he said, and the march back to the ship is somehow even awkward than the rest of the day had been.

Ellie offered another smirk as Max relayed the Captain’s orders with very little detail, and when she headed out, Max all but dragged him into Felix’s little room. SAM was still doing round 10 of the 20 rounds of cleaning Max had instructed it to do.

“How much do you recall?” Max asked once the door slid close behind him, his person blocking the only exit out. In the tiny cabin, Felix suddenly felt trapped. Is this what a confession was supposed to be?

“Er. I was drinking with Nyoka. Ok, I was maaaybe a bit drunk. I guess I went to the wrong room. Sorry. And also sorry for puking on your floor.”

Max shook his head. “Here’s what I know. There I am, sitting in my bed with a book, when you barge in at two in the morning, disrobing down to your small clothes with little care and climbing into my bed to categorically molest me while pressing your _hard fucking dick_ up against my groin. How do you imagine that makes me feel?”

Felix shrank back, “Er… sorry?”

“That’s not what I asked,” Max snaps, “I asked, how do you think I felt when you walked into my room unannounced, stripped yourself and then spend the rest of the night feeling me up?”

_Turned on_, is honestly what Felix wants to say, because that’s how he’ll feel if the roles were reversed, but he still had a couple of brain cells left clanking around his skull to know that it’s not the right thing to say.

“I don’t know,” Felix said, and Max let out a long suffering sigh, “Disgusted, I suppose. And I’m really sorry for that, for harassing you.” 

Max was rubbing his forehead, pinching at the skin between his eyebrows, and then he sighed again.

“No, well, I’m not, ah, _disgusted,_” Max said, hesitant, and then resigned, “I want to help you, Felix. You’re a brilliant young man, there’s so much potential in you. I heard what Nyoka said, and I don’t want- If you think- perhaps, believe- that I’m somehow abusing this-“

“But I want you to,” and the words escaped him, that two braincells in his head seemingly burnt out from that last exercise in thinking, and Max is staring at him in some weird combination of shock and intrigue, and damn it, damn it damn it! Felix is not about hiding cards or showing cards, he’s a speak-first-and-do-first-and-deal-with-the-consequences-later person, so he powered on,

“I want you to want me, in any way that you want. I want to you keep having lessons with me. I want you to look at me the way you do when I surprise you with a question during our lessons. I want you to call my name with such tender affection that it makes my knees wobble and my heart explode. I want you to praise me and I want you to let me touch you and I want you to fuck me so hard-“

Max cut him off, doesn’t let him finish the rest of that thought, “Do you even understand what you’re asking?”

“Yes,” Felix snapped, furious, because he’s only thought about this so many nights and Max is choosing now, of all times, to belittle him? His face is warm again from both shame and annoyance, and it made him shake, just a little. “But if you’d rather not, then tell me _now_, and we can all move on from this-“

“I do,” Max said, and Felix rather felt as if an explosion was threatening to burst forth from his chest, “But I need you to think carefully about this.”

Felix laughed, a scoff escaping him, “I’m not that much for thinking, as you repeatedly remind me. And I’m no blushing virgin, so don’t you even dare think of me that way. I just want to know – is this, is all of this, any of this, mutual?”

“Yes,” Max said quietly, stepping in to close the gap between them, “You have a lot of demands.”

“Damn straight,” Felix grumbled, because he’s been left alone in his bed with nothing but his imagination and hand for far too long, and now everything seems to finally be falling into place but he’s still left to wait and it absolutely _ached_.

“Then I think you should start earning them, clever boy that you are,” Max murmured, voice low and husky as he slipped a hand under the waistband of Felix’s trousers, and when his rough fingers find his throbbing length for a long and seductive graze, it’s everything Felix dreamt of and more.

**Author's Note:**

> so when I played Outer Worlds Felix and Max were just so diametrically opposed philosophically that I knew I had to stick the two of them together as often as possible for lols, but then they started building a budding relationship that made me all daaaaw because it was so cute and wholesome, and then the whole "pretend last night didn't happen" banter happened and I'm like wait what
> 
> my first contribution to this glorious game is this softcore praise kink fic and I ain't even mad (except a bit because this was supposed to be warm-up for nano but turned into a whole 3.5k length thing that I spent all day on)


End file.
